One of the frustrations with the basic public-speaking course is that there is an inevitable tendency to teach the old sender-message-context-receiver model of communication. Many of the basic texts use it, and the typical assignments--one speaker in front of an audience--certainly reinforce it. Feminists have envisioned an alternative way of…

Article based on material submitted by the author for a course in the history of education.

Assessments were made of speech/language and communication skills of 48 six- to 12-year-old moderately and severely retarded special-school pupils. Ss showed little or no progress with age in articulation and social communication skills, but sentence construction skills and vocabulary comprehension did show continuing improvement with age. Fewer…

This official scoring guide for speaking presents details of the 6-point scoring system used in Oregon schools for the 1989-99 school year. It list attributes of students' communication to merit a score from 1 (lowest) to 6 (highest) in the areas of ideas and content, organization, language, and delivery. (RS)

Communicating, the perennial favorite for how-to articles, is investigated here in connection with conference behavior. Prerequisite skills for various kinds of conferences are discussed. (Editor)

Advice on teaching inductively by questioning students. (CH)

Specific proposals for improving listening skills. (CH)

Provides a mnemonic device for remembering eight elements involved in planning oral business presentations. Discusses each of the eight elements. (RL)

Theoretically, as one's ability to communicate improves, so does his self-concept as a communicator. Students enrolled in a basic speech course or an advanced interviewing course were administered a Platz Q-Sort to measure communicator self-concept. Results imply a communication course does significantly change communicator self-concept. (Author)

Speeches and compositions often become mere word lists, obscuring the message's true meaning with too many words. This paper shows that the words "use,""of," and "it" can be eliminated from writing and speech, making communications shorter, more understandable, and more efficient. Examples are provided. (RL)

Public speaking texts urge speakers to organize their message in order to increase their audience's comprehension of it. Tests were run to determine if listeners understand better when three message organization variables are employed in a speech: explicit statement of the central idea, explicit statement of the main points, and transitions before…

An annotated bibliography of 11 documents included in the ERIC system that are sources of information on teaching listening and speaking as an interactive process. (DD)

Outlines the skills that identify the communicatively competent bargainer and examines and assesses the behavior of Nixon, Haldeman, and Ehrlichman against these standards. Conversations reveal serious weaknesses in their communicative competence and their skills in bargaining and conflict resolution. The result was an escalation rather than a…